do talk to strangers

I am officially the worst at updating this on a regular basis. Sorry Grandma! Sorry Dad!

Things have finally started to feel really comfortable here. I don't know if it's the awesome weather or the fact that I've been here for over a month now, but I'm really enjoying being here and actually feel like I'm doing something important and valuable with all of my time.

What is new? Well, May happened. Didn't see that coming. The Lodge opens this weekend, which makes me so unbelievably happy! I cannot wait to be there. But I haven't really even been thinking about that because I've been focused on being here, which is a great sign.

Yesterday was the deadline for students to send in their college deposits, which is pretty exciting because now everyone has a much more concrete idea of where they're going! Mostly everyone is a lot happier/relaxed now that that's out of the way.

New kind of exciting things: I joined a gym and a group of people who play frisbee. I forgot that other people go do things like this, so it ended up being a really good way to meet more people and actually have real interactions with something other than Netflix. The schedule somehow works out perfectly because I can go swimming on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights, and then frisbee is on Wednesday nights and I'm always passing out/driving somewhere on Friday. I am actually starting to enjoy playing frisbee because I finally understand what's happening and can throw/catch it on a more consistent basis. I'm sort of really excited to play at Dartmouth because they practice more regularly than the hockey team does, so it'll be a good way to be active more of the time.

On Monday night after I swam, I realized there is a hot tub there too, which is freaking awesome. So I went over to sit in the hot tub for a few minutes and it was just me and this older guy, you know, hanging out in the hot tub. I decided I could just sit there and be absorbed in my own pool of warm bubbling goodness, or I could be a social person and start talking to him. It's always bothered me when people start conversations just to be polite, though. Not that there's anything wrong with that - it just doesn't seem genuine. If I want to have a real conversation with you, it's not just going to be "Hi. How are you? Good. Me too. The end." I want to know things about you! Everybody has a story. Everyone's story is worth sharing, as long as you're willing to listen. Anyways, long story short, I'm sitting there in the hot tub across from this guy, so I asked him, "If you could have a super power, what would it be?" He told me that he wanted to rule a country, which I guess is a super power. Then he went on for like fifteen minutes talking about power structures and the world and famous rulers and I sort of regretted asking him. Ultimately, though, I was glad I asked because it made me happy about life and people's abilities to interact with each other.

Relevant: The seniors all have a final English project under the theme of "fighting ignorance". Basically, they each pick a topic and educate a chosen audience on their topic. One of the seniors decided to do a project based around the idea that parents teach their kids not to talk to strangers and how that maybe isn't the best way to frame such sentiment. I wanted to hug her.

Okay, I would write more/find pictures to put up, but students are starting to show up which means the wifi's about to become overloaded and stop working. I'll try to update this more frequently in the future.